ReFocus: The Films of Susan Seidelman

This first collection devoted entirely to critical essays on Susan Seidelman—director, producer, and visionary of feminist American cinema and television—includes never-before accessed archival material on Seidelman’s works and an interview with Seidelman containing new insights into her process, professional movement within the film and television industries, and lasting impact on stories being told by and about American women and New Yorkers. Hers is a career of firsts, and this collection focuses on her engagement with girlhood, gender roles, aging, disability, tensions between the urban and the rural, and sex through her film career. This collection also encourages new perspectives on auteurism as it relates to televisual productions as well as broadening thinking about historical developments in the film and television industries to note and credit influential accomplishments made within popular films and genres—areas in which women directors were often offered more opportunities.